Off the mean streets

The popular stereotype pegs Scorsese as a director of gritty urban dramas, but that’s a characterization the filmmaker has always resisted. A voracious cinephile himself, Scorsese has crafted a remarkably diverse output, and he’s rarely if ever backed down from the challenge of working in a new mode. The trailers for his new Shutter Island make it look like his most conventional genre film since Cape Fear. But has he ever made a truly conventional film?

Setting aside Scorsese’s pre–Mean Streets features (Who’s That Knocking at My Door?, Boxcar Bertha) and documentaries, here’s a guide to what we might call—to use a problematic and slightly patronizing term—“atypical Scorsese.”

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) Scorsese’s first Hollywood film follows a single mother (Ellen Burstyn) who reinvents herself after her husband is killed in an accident. Burstyn reputedly wanted Scorsese for the project because she thought he’d offset the story’s conventionality with his more personal, rough-hewn technique. In its Wizard of Oz homages, its roving camera and its soundtrack, the film is pure Scorsese.

New York, New York (1977) This hugely ambitious, nearly three-hour musical is generally regarded as one of Scorsese’s weakest works, but that may be because it’s so transparently neither fish nor fowl. Even the title suggests an opposition, pitting the fantasy New York of musicals like On the Town and It’s Always Fair Weather against the more anxiety-riddled, “real” New York of Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. As on-again, off-again lovers, Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli are both superb, even if they don’t seem to be acting in the same film.

The Color of Money (1986) The fact that this Chicago-shot movie is a sequel to The Hustler (1961) may be the most Scorsesean thing about it, but the director’s touch is also apparent in the heightened attention to the way Paul Newman’s “Fast” Eddie Felson thinks, observes and covets. It’s not Raging Bull, but it is an uncommonly rich character study.

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) By telling the Christ story in the vernacular and giving it a jangly, rhythmic feel totally alien to biblical epics, Scorsese strives to examine the role of faith in contemporary life. Controversy overshadowed what now seems like one of the boldest and most original works in the director’s oeuvre.

The Age of Innocence (1993) Scorsese tries his hand at an opulent costume drama, a genre that allows him to quote amply from one of his most treasured films, The Leopard (1963). Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) finds himself caught between two women, his beautiful fiancée (Winona Ryder) and the disreputable countess (Michelle Pfeiffer) whom he loves. It’s another of Scorsese’s examinations of psychological torment, and a fascinating companion piece to Terence Davies’s more austere handling of Edith Wharton in The House of Mirth (2000).

Kundun (1997) Whenever Scorsese comes up with a list of his favorite recent movies, a surprising number are deliberate, glacially paced art films, worlds removed from the energy of his own work. Kundun is the main exception, and the story of the Dalai Lama allows Scorsese to explore the influence of some of his favorite contemporary Asian directors, from China’s Tian Zhuangzhuang to Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien. It’s visually enthralling, but Scorsese directs like a tourist, and the Philip Glass score doesn’t help.

The Aviator (2004) Scorsese’s attraction to the subject matter—specifically Hughes’s OCD—is self-evident; look beyond the standard biopic structure and you’ll see a film about a man’s troubled relationship to his fame. It’s not Scorsese’s flashiest filmmaking, but it may be his most self-reflexive work.

Shutter Island opens Friday.

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